The 14 Main Advantages and Disadvantages of Globalization

The Advantages and disadvantages of globalization Have been discussed in a vigorous debate. There are those who defend the benefits related to the freedom that this fact brings and those who believe that it is harmful to the cultural integrity.

The Globalization Is defined as the medium through which certain values, beliefs, ideas, technologies and precepts of any kind are implanted globally as a reality that transcends all the differences that divide human beings.

In this sense, it is usually seen as a way to overcome the limitations that come from religions, political parties and cultures that are locked in their own mentality.

The consequences of globalization had been warned even before the rise of the Internet. There are effects that had already been seen in historical examples, such as the Roman Empire.

The notion of a new form of Dominium mundi (The"conquest of the world"in Spanish) has recovered in the second half of the twentieth century, although it has been observed much more frequently in the course of the twenty-first century, since it is a technological era.

Throughout this article there will be a brief exposition of seven advantages and seven disadvantages of globalization. These are a balance of their contributions and risks to contemporary society.

Likewise, they must be treated as paradoxes in which an advantage can become a disadvantage and vice versa. This will also serve to weigh the aspects inherent to globalization, in which there is a constant exchange of ideas increasingly universal.

Advantages of globalization

1- Market diffusion

About 500 years ago it was unthinkable that sugar and cloves could be bought for cooking at home, both of which were extremely expensive products that did not come to the table if there was no purchasing power or if the government did not allow it.

There were parts of the world where it was not even known what sugar or cloves were, since they were not consumed or unknown. The market, therefore, was limited and, incidentally, expensive.

With globalization, the economy flows at a more spontaneous pace, where goods and services can be enjoyed around the world.

Although it is true that some imported products can be somewhat expensive, it can not be denied that they can be enjoyed in a short time, anywhere and many times at reasonable prices. There are even offers on pages like Amazon or Aliexpress. Globalization, then, does the free market a favor.

2- Great ideological diversification

Without globalization, it is very likely that Marxism would never have reached China and Japan would have stalled in the feudalism of Tokugawa Period .

In addition, it is also very likely that Latin America would have known (or known later) the work of Pasteur , The inventions of Edison Or the novels of Faulkner . Therefore, globalization is a weapon against scientific, technological, philosophical and even literary backwardness.

3- Transmission of cultural values

Globalization makes it possible to spread cultures that were not previously known, or of which only a handful of prejudices were known.

Thanks to the Internet you can listen to music from India from Colombia; In the same way you can read gauchesque poetry in Finland, or you can see a film of Kurosawa in the U.S.

In fact, it was this globalization that made George Lucas Inspire your Star Wars Starting from a Japanese film with the theme of samurai.

4- Language exchange

The use of an international language is of old date, reason why in its history one spoke Latin, Koine Greek, French and German.

Currently, the most vivid example is in English, which communicates millions of people around the world, far more than the Chinese does.

With globalization, it is possible for an Italian and a Czech to understand each other in English without the need for Italian to speak Czech and without Czech speaking Italian.

5 - Unification of moral values

Previously it was believed that morality was in religion, but lay values ​​proved that a world where respected the beliefs of others was possible.

This is so because in a globalized world, it is necessary to recognize and accept that people living in distant countries such as Rwanda are also human beings and must be treated as such. Ethical ideas, therefore, are universal and apply equally for all, without distinction of any kind.

6- Decreased social tensions

On the basis of the previous point, globalization is the way to reduce the tensions between societies completely different from one another.

With a more universalized morality, the result is that the rivalries of yesteryear are transformed into friendships, that there may be dialogue and concord in gentilices that were formerly sworn enemies from time immemorial. This may be the formula for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, for example.

7- Greater human sensitivity

Considering the foregoing advantages, it can be said that globalization makes the world a space where people fight for equality and justice in any place. International tribunals will be the best way to prevent impunity.

Similarly, globalized information in the media creates a consciousness in which, for example, Mexicans can express their solidarity for those killed in the terrorist attacks in Paris.

Disadvantages of globalization

1- Threat to local and national economies

It has been criticized that globalization is a way for larger economies to impose themselves on smaller economies.

Although there is a free market all over the world, this does not mean that developed countries do not find the means to take advantage of this situation to wage trade wars and to use the battlefields of developing countries or underdeveloped countries.

2- Imposition of foreign ideas

This is a controversial point, since it was globalization that allowed many countries to leave the nineteenth century. The Arab Spring I could not have gotten it without the power of the internet.

But countries such as those that host Islamic culture often prefer to refrain from using Western fashion, and in several regions of Latin America models of thought are sought that are not Eurocentric, but those coming from Asia.

Transculturization: cultural contamination?

This disadvantage is strictly linked to the previous one. While it is true that in the 21st century, countries like Japan export their culture to levels they would never have imagined in the Meiji Period , It is also true that Latin American populations adopt cultural precepts and set aside their own.

This is also a polemic point in which national identity is put on the table. In fact, the Japanese talk about the dilemma"modernization versus Westernization".

4- Extinction of minority languages

Languages ​​have disappeared for centuries, and many of them have only limited data. However, since the twentieth century many neologisms have been imported from the English-speaking world that penetrate other languages, such as Spanish, from which even the Spanglish .

On the other hand, minority languages ​​disappear faster with globalization, since their communities, unable to use them abroad, abandon them for a more spoken language, such as English.

5. Universal morality: a danger to religions?

In a globalized world, the moral is for the Vietnamese as well as for the Panamanians: the one based on the human rights subscribed to the UN.

However, neither Vietnamese nor Panamanians have been brought up in the same religions, so one wonders whether globalization is really a means of sweeping the boundaries between Christianity and Eastern creeds, or whether it is a way of securing them through multiculturalism , In which both beliefs must be respected.

6- Tolerance, but for convenience

Taking into account that with globalization comes a more universal morality, it remains to know if the reduction of social tensions is sincere or is only made as a formalism that can be easily broken with feigned pacts between the parties concerned.

It is not to sew and to sing, nor to tell them that they are brothers, is to disarticulate one by one the motives that led them to fight in the past.

7- Neo-imperialism and neocolonialism

With a more global morality, economy, ideas and precepts, a new form of imperialism and colonialism can come from countries that are capable of producing all those beliefs, such as China and the United States.

On the other hand, nations and cultures that are less affluent and with less creative contributions must conform to the fact of consuming and accepting them, because that is the tendency and must be accepted under penalty of being outside the international circle.

References

Bhagwati, Jagdish (2004). In Defense of Globalization: With a New Afterword. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Milanovic, Branko (2016). Global Inequality: A New Approach to the Age of Globalization. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.